Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees, shrubs, occasionally rhizomatous perennial herbs or subshrubs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple or compound (palmate). Alternate. Margins entire to palmately lobed. Petiolate. Stipules well–developed, in Bixa protecting the terminal bud.

Flowers: Flowers in panicles or racemes, sometimes appearing before the leaves. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic or nearly so. Calyx of 5 sepals, distinct, imbricate, caducous. Corolla of 5 petals, distinct, imbricate or convolute. Stamens numerous, ± in 2–5 groups, sometimes inserted on nectary disk; anthers dithecal, opening by short slits or pores, in Bixa folded so that the terminal pore area is morphologically central. Ovary superior, 2–5-carpellate, 1-celled or sometimes basally 3–5 celled by complete intrusion of the placentas, placentation partly axile or parietal; ovules numerous, anatropous.

Fruit: Loculicidal capsules. Seeds with oily or starchy endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: